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" That is what leadership is all about: staking your ground ahead of where opinion is and convincing people, not simply following the popular opinion of the moment. "

Doris Kearns Goodwin

Moment

Opinion

People

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" Where's the progress that we're going to see in Afghanistan? You have to keep public support both on the economy and the war or these things will really become troubling. "

" My books are written with a strong chronological spine. "

" My recurring nightmare is that someday I will be faced with a panel: Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson all of whom will be telling me everything I got wrong about them. I know that Johnson's out there saying, 'Why is it that what you wrote about the Kennedys is twice as long as the book you wrote about me?' "

" FDR once said he was like a cat, that he would pounce and then relax. That's much harder to do in the 24-hour cable world, because it's almost like the press demands of you to be saying something or doing something every day. "

" I wish we could go back to the time when the private lives of our public figures were relevant only if they directly affected their public responsibilities. "

" I've been to the White House a number of times. "

" Journalists were at the forefront. From the Civil War until the early 1900s, nothing was being done to solve the problems of the Industrial Age. "

" Taft was Roosevelt's handpicked successor. I didn't know how deep the friendship was between the two men until I read their almost four hundred letters, stretching back the to early '30s. It made me realize the heartbreak when they ruptured was much more than a political division. "

Doris Kearns Goodwin

Political

Men

" I had been involved in the March on Washington in 1963. I was with friends carrying a sign, 'Protestants, Jews and Catholics for Civil Rights.' "

" I am a historian. With the exception of being a wife and mother, it is who I am. And there is nothing I take more seriously. "

" I shall always be grateful for this curious love of history, allowing me to spend a lifetime looking back into the past, allowing me to learn from these large figures about the struggle for meaning for life. "

" I now rely on a scanner, which reproduces the passages I want to cite, and then I keep my own comments on those books in a separate file so that I will never confuse the two again. "

" We've got to figure out a way that we give a private sphere for our public leaders. We're not gonna get the best people in public life if we don't do that. "

" I write about presidents. That means I write about guys - so far. I'm interested in the people closest to them, the people they love and the people they've lost... I don't want to limit it to what they did in the office, but what happens at home and in their interactions with other people. "

" Ironically, the more intensive and far-reaching a historian's research, the greater the difficulty of citation. As the mountain of material grows, so does the possibility of error. "

Doris Kearns Goodwin

Difficulty

Research

" I really believe that what happens one day affects the next, and I think that came from that experience of learning that if I told the score inning by inning, play by play, it built up to its natural climax. "

" The past is not simply the past, but a prism through which the subject filters his own changing self-image. "

" Those who knew Lincoln described him as an extraordinarily funny man. Humor was an essential aspect of his temperament. He laughed, he explained, so he did not weep. "

" I think after Sandy Hook, when Obama went out, and he talked a lot about gun control and met with the parents, there was a sense that something was going to happen. But then, I guess, the power of special interests was greater than public sentiment. "

" There are but a handful of times in the history of our country when there occurs a transformation so remarkable that a molt seems to take place, and an altered country begins to emerge. "

" Obama does seem to have what both FDR and Lincoln had, which is the recognition that you have to hold back at times and then wait to come forward. "

" As a historian, what I trust is my ability to take a mass of information and tell a story shaped around it. "

" A lot of times when people are on campaigns, it can be like a movie set. "

Doris Kearns Goodwin

Movie

Campaigns

" The only protection as a historian is to institute a process of research and writing that minimizes the possibility of error. And that I have tried to do, aided by modern technology, which enables me, having long since moved beyond longhand, to use a computer for both organizing and taking notes. "

Doris Kearns Goodwin

Long

Writing

" Roosevelt's strength was that he understood he would never get anything through the Republican old guard, his party, unless the public pressured Congress. "

" Journalism still, in a democracy, is the essential force to get the public educated and mobilized to take action on behalf of our ancient ideals. "